In many film and television works, some people in ancient times drank as if they were drinking water, holding a wine jar to drink there, and even known as "a thousand cups are not drunk", and in many classics, there are similar records.
For example, Yu Dingguo, a court lieutenant of the Han Dynasty, described in the Book of Han as "drinking to several stones without chaos", at that time, one stone was ten buckets, and one bucket was ten liters, to put it bluntly, Yu Dingguo would not get drunk every time he drank hundreds of liters.
It sounds incredible, let alone drinking, even if it is drinking water, so much is probably unbearable, and the ancients' massive quantity is mainly for two reasons: the wine at that time was not as intoxicating as it is now, followed by the deviation of weights and measures.
Not to mention whether ancient people could drink so much wine, one thing is certain, for a long time in ancient times, the domestic alcohol degree was not very high, and there was not much alcohol in it.
Although as early as the pre-Qin era, the Chinese people knew how to make wine, but the wine at that time was fermented wine.
At the beginning, people found that wine, that is, the closed fermentation of grains and fruits, produced an intoxicating aroma, that is, the birth of alcohol, and then people used grains and the like, adding fermentation agents for fermentation, resulting in the earliest wine.
The original degree of fermented wine is very low, and with the increase of time or the rise of temperature, it will not only lead to deterioration, but also make a large amount of alcohol volatilize, once it exceeds ten degrees, it will stop fermentation, and after a certain period of time, the alcohol content will further decline.
With the development of time, the later alcohol degree also increased, for example, in the Eastern Han Dynasty, compared with the Western Han Dynasty, the same amount of grain and grain was obtained, but the amount of wine obtained decreased, which also meant that the alcohol content increased.
Because of the rise in alcohol levels, people in the Eastern Han Dynasty called high-grade liquor "poison".
Also because of the rise in alcohol content, the situation of heavy drinking in the Western Han Dynasty began to decrease in the Eastern Han Dynasty, and later with the improvement of winemaking technology, it became more obvious, especially the birth of wine koji, which made the winemaking technology change suddenly.
However, from the pre-Qin to the Tang and Song dynasties, even the highest reading liquor, the degree usually did not exceed fifteen degrees, and in the early Song Dynasty, distillation methods began to appear, but it was not the same thing as the current distilled liquor, and the degree was still very low.
In the late Northern Song Dynasty, the true distilled liquor technology appeared, and the degree of wine increased significantly, but at that time, the production of such wine was very low, and because the degree was too high, it was often used in medicine and not for daily drinking.
It was not until the Yuan Dynasty that distillation and winemaking technology from the Arab region entered the Central Plains and suddenly arose during the Ming and Qing dynasties.
Compared with the previous fermented wine, the degree of distilled wine has been very high, so in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, there is almost no such thing as drinking or not getting drunk, but the number of people drinking is increasing.
In the Ming and Qing dynasties, because of the progress of winemaking technology and the increase in people's demand for wine, half of the annual grain production in many places was used for winemaking, because drinking became a common practice, which made the food crisis worse.
In our view today, there is another very important reason for the large amount of drinking by the ancients, that is, the weights and measures of different dynasties have changed very dramatically, and it is not the same as today, and the massive amount of the ancients is not necessarily true.
In the "Mengxi Pen Talk", it is described that the six buckets in the Han Dynasty period, that is, the song dynasty's one bucket and eight liters, have a huge gap.
The one stone of the Han Dynasty, estimated in the "Notes on the Stone Forest", is equivalent to the nineteen pounds of the Song Dynasty.
What's more, many of the things recorded in ancient texts are not detailed, and the kind of drinking a few stones is not drunk, whether it is continuous drinking, or drinking intermittently at banquets, it is not clear, not to mention, the use of exaggerated expressions is also traditional.
In fact, many of the things described in the classics may not be true, because it is not uncommon to use imaginary numbers to describe, Li Baidou wine hundreds of poems, this is also a relatively normal amount, that kind of drinking hundreds of pounds at a time, it is really not credible.
Don't say that it is drinking, even if it is just drinking water, such a huge amount is not something that ordinary people can carry.
That is to say, the kind of heavy drink mentioned in many texts is just an exaggerated way to describe a person who has a lot of alcohol, and this person is indeed very drinkable, but he is not really able to drink hundreds of pounds of wine.
On the whole, the huge amount of drinking in ancient times was partly because the ancient wine was not as high as it is now, on the other hand, because the weights and measures of different dynasties varied greatly, and on the other hand, they used imaginary numbers to describe, not really drinking so much.